Living, Loving, Learning

Well, we hit the road early yesterday morning. We are headed to Wellfleet, Cape Cod. The kids and I get to stay for 5 WEEKS!!!!!! Unfortunately Bruce can only stay for 10 days but we are going to make the most of those precious days. Yesterday was smooth sailing (except for a shoe leaping for freedom into a gutter at W Virginia rest area!). We spent the night in Lancaster. This morning we are going to visit with my grandparents before hitting the road for the final 9 hr. drive. Follow me on instagram to see more of my photos.

Packing for for a 5 week trip to visit my Cape Cod family. Sooooo excited. Going to miss my sweet Lottie though. At least she'll be happy since she will be with Hilary, her favorite person on the planet!

Bruce took Griffin to the local Tradewater Pirates baseball game last weekend. They had an absolute blast. Bruce is loving that Griff is getting old enough to enjoy and understand watching a whole game.

Can make his own sandwich ...check.

Matt is back with another soul-lifting, butt shaking, arm waving, people uniting, peace and joy spreading video. And once again, I shed many many tears of happiness this morning as I watched it.  You can check out a past post about Matt here .  Dancing with him has just been added to my bucket list!  ;)

Brandy and Myles hosted a wonderful pool party yesterday!!  We had an amazing time!  Griffin is a little fish and Lucy is well on her way growing her fins.  These boys were so so happy to be able to spend one more afternoon together before their long summer vacation separation.  They are too funny!  Remember this colored sunscreen from the 80's??  I have been looking for it for soooo long and finally found some .  It looks silly, yes, but when you are spending a lot of time in the water it is sooo helpful.  When the color wears off  you know that it is time to apply sunscreen again.  Perfect for our fair skin and my OCD concerning sunburns!

Happy Father's Day to all those Papa's (and all those outstanding men who love the young 'uns in their lives as if they were their own) out there.  I am so thankful for this amazing man and so so thankful to have him as my co-parent.  His love, commitment and attention given to his children is rivaled by no man.  From building a special play list to listen to every time they make his homemade pizza together (my kids will never hear Purple People Eater without their mouths watering) to hours of playing Pokemon and Lions to making sure he is involved in every aspect of their care on a daily basis, my children have an extremely blessed relationship with their Papa.  And to celebrate how much we love this dude, we headed down to the W.C. Handy Blues Festival in Henderson, KY last night.  It was an awesome night filled with great live music, much bouncing, glowing, dancing and picnicking. Here's a glimpse.

First harvest of black raspberries from the backyard.

In order to try to avoid the summer brain dump and keep the wee ones in engaged, we have been doing a half hour of summer school most days. Although Griffin sometimes protests I think they both enjoy it. I LOVE watching them increasing their knowledge.

We had the Lowbridge/Solise clan (minus Josh, lucky dog is at Bonnaroo) over last night for one our favorite summer dinner parties, a kebab bar.  Of course we had to have some good drinks, I made this delicious strawberry basil sangria . Everybody had a great time putting together their perfect kebab.  The offerings were marinated chicken breast, pork tenderloin, red, orange and yellow bell peppers, mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, red onion, zucchini and squash.  Madeline was especially stoked...little chef in the making! Bruce was an amazing grill master and they were perfectly delicious! Add a super yum fruit salad and we were all happy that the summer produce is rolling in. After dinner we took a walk downtown where there was a little city event happening with live music, food booths and a few (very few) kids activities.  We decided to bring little Omar since he is finally fully vaccinated and we need to concentrate on socializing him....

The aquarium had an awesome exhibit where they displayed all kinds of jellyfish along with beautiful displays of artwork depicting jellyfish.  Definitely my favorite part of the day!